Tings are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that look to open into alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
